Chapter 32: Wolfless

The first frost came on the ninth of October, and my grandfather was alive to see it.

He stood at the window of the lodge kitchen that morning in his dressing gown, with a cup of weak tea.

He watched the grass go white.

"I said I would," he told me.

"You did."

"You'll hold me to the wedding too."

"It's tonight," I said. "You're giving me away."

"I've been told. Twice. By the nurse, and by the envoy."

We married in the orchard at dusk, under the tree my mother had planted.

Three hundred wolves stood among the apple trees with lanterns, and the frost glittered on the grass.

Corbin stood up with Ewan, in a suit that didn't fit and with fence-post calluses on both hands.

My grandfather walked me down the row with one arm through mine and the nurse a step behind with the oxygen.

He didn't lean on me until the very end.

The envoy waited under the tree with his notebook closed.

He had come to be the Council's witness, and he'd declined to take a seat.

"By the old law," he said, "there is a question asked at every wedding of two wolves."

I felt the whole orchard go still.

"Does either of you wish to reject the other?"

Ewan looked at me, and I looked at him.

"No," we said, together.

"Does any wolf here know a reason that either of you should?"

Nobody answered.

The wind moved in the branches.

"Then there is nothing to reject," said the envoy, "and the Council has nothing to write."

He capped his pen, and he smiled, which I hadn't known he could do.

Ewan took both my hands.

"I'll say it plain," he said. "I waited three years for you to come home."

His voice caught.

"I'll wait for anything else you ask me to, and I'll never ask you to wait for me."

"That was longer than the rehearsal."

"I wrote it down."

"Of course you did."

He laughed, and I kissed him in front of three hundred people, and the orchard roared.

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